(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
The later and later you get into a baseball season, the more and more the clichés of the game start to rear their ugly heads.
Throwing strikes, simplifying the moment, making the routine plays are ones that come to mind for the everyday fan.
In the case of Arizona State baseball (27-7, 10-5 Pac-12), ask anyone in the dugout for this weekend’s series against the reigning national champion Oregon State Beavers (25-9-1, 11-4 Pac-12), and they’ll tell you it was the little things that kept them from clinching a series win on Sunday, as the Beavers came out on top 4-3 in a tightly-contested battle.
The attention to detail slipped momentarily for ASU in the fifth inning, all with two outs.
Blake Burzell threw all five of his pitches in relief of starter Sam Romero outside the strike zone before being lifted himself for Marc Lidd.
A cross-up between Lidd and catcher Sam Ferri resulted in a passed ball and a run scoring before a two-run single by OSU’s Jake Dukart turned what could have only been a 1-0 lead into a 4-0 lead.
“We didn’t execute some plays, so that’s on us,” Sun Devil designated hitter Erik Tolman said. “I think it’s simplifying it. I think we get ahead of ourselves a little bit, everyone. And we try to go for that big hit, instead of just trusting the teammate behind you, or on the mound of throwing strikes and all that. It’s all about trust and simplifying the situation.”
Despite falling behind 4-0 in the fifth inning to a team that came into the weekend with the fifth-best team ERA in the country at 2.78, the Sun Devils continued to prove that no matter what, their offense will find a way to keep them in any game they play this season.
A Spencer Torkelson home run and a gift RBI double by Carter Aldrete that Preston Jones lost in the Arizona sunshine pulled the Devils to within 4-2 after six, and with a run already in in the ninth, two men on and two men out, Torkelson whiffed on “some noise on the outside corner” from Beaver sophomore Mitchell Verburg as the Devils dropped their second-straight Pac-12 series.
“[I’d take that situation] a thousand times over,” Sun Devil head coach Tracy Smith said. “There’s nobody on the planet that I would’ve rather had in that batter’s box in that situation, and you know what, it didn’t happen today.”
“I’ll put my money on him again. I hope that situation comes up again cause he will succeed.”
The Sun Devils are now 2-6, with two midweek losses and two Pac-12 series losses since their taxing three-game sweep over Arizona two weekends ago.
The regression back to the mean from their absurd 25-1 start is now in full effect as they find themselves in the week-by-week dogfight that is vying for position at the top of the Pac-12 standings.
It’s hard to take positives out of a series that saw both teams score 11 runs and could have resulted in a sweep for either side, but Smith believes he’s starting to see his team get back to the 25-1 version of themselves rather than the side that lost 4-of-5 coming into the weekend.
“As a competitor, you don’t really take a lot of solace in moral victories,” Smith said. “The thing I would say on the weekend in general is I liked our effort. I liked how hard we played. What I didn’t like was the execution, or lack thereof. I thought we were sloppy at times.”
“When you take teams that are that evenly matched, it’s gonna be one thing like that.”
If there is one positive that can come out of this funk the Devils currently find themselves in, it’s that they are learning game-by-game how incredibly tough it is to win in their conference and will be to win come a potential post-season berth while still being buoyed with confidence by starting out on a 25-1 tear that was unprecedented in its dominance.
“I think our guys fully understand what’s ahead of them, they’re not happy right now,” Smith said. “But we’re by no means lost any confidence in what we’re doing.”
Bobby Kraus is a baseball beat writer for the Walter Cronkite Sports Network. You can follow him on Twitter @bobbykraus22
